Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy — The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. — When Microsoft and Apple were founded. — As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup.

Start a company in a recession? Absolutely! — Now is a great time to start a company. Why? Because great people are available to join you, VCs are loaded with cash, and office space is available cheap. Everything is cheap and readily available in a recession.

FRIENDS OF THE BAND — ZUCKERBERG PONDERS FACEBOOK MUSIC BIZ — Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is plotting a possible push into the digital-music business in the wake of MySpace's launch of MySpace Music last month. — The surging social-networking giant is talking to a number …

Fennec - M9 (User Experience Alpha) — Fennec (Mobile Firefox) has reached milestone 9, which is also our first alpha! We're calling this release the User Experience alpha. The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface.

LittleBigPlanet release delayed worldwide — The release of Sony's highly anticipated PlayStation 3 title LittleBigPlanet has been delayed worldwide. — The title has been delayed due to references to the Qu'ran on the in-game soundtrack. — “During the review process prior to the release …

Keeping Count: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker — After Silicon Valley woke up to the economic crisis last week and VCs rang the alarm bells, startups are starting to heed the call and tighten their belts for a long winter. As the slide above from Sequoia Capital illustrates …

A Sad Day — This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually every company, Pandora is not immune to the challenges presented by the current economic turmoil. We are trying to react quickly and responsibly to the new environment.

Man killed wife in Facebook row — A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook. — Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to “single” days after he had moved out.

Difficult Times, Difficult Decisions — This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.

Search engine startup SearchMe cuts 20 percent of staff — The streets of Silicon Valley are running red this week. The latest startup to pare down is search engine SearchMe, a company with high-profile investors and a warchest of nearly $40 million. — It reduced its staff by two-thirds …

Translation From Weasel-Speak to English of the Entirety of Duncan Riley's Second Post-MacBook-Introduction-Event Update to His Widely-Cited Week-Ago Report That Apple Was Going to Announce an ‘$800 Laptop’ — With regard to “Update 2” here. … The entire report was completely wrong.

Google hedges against foreign currency swings — In recent months, financial analysts have expressed concern that Google's financial results could be hurt by foreign-exchange rate changes. But Google said Thursday that it has taken measures to insulate itself from the potential problem.

Footnotes in Google Docs — You can now add footnotes in Google Docs documents, as the Google help center explains. Just click anywhere in the document and pick Insert -> Footnote from the menu. The resulting document can display as shown in the screenshot, with a collapsable gray box next to the text …

Desperate Google Will Now Take Gambling Ads — Google's Q3 growth rate in the UK is a sign of things to come elsewhere: a measly 17%. Why was growth so slow? In part because of the economy and in part because of market saturation. Google utterly dominates search in the UK, as it will soon do in the US and everywhere else.

Amazon's UK Launch Of Kindle Delayed — Amazon won't be releasing its Kindle wireless reader in the UK in time for Christmas, thanks to the complex agreements that it must secure with European operators to ensure the gadget works. In the US, Kindle uses whispernet, the Amazon data MVNO that uses the Sprint …

Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just ‘a lot better’ — Windows 7 will be like Windows Vista , but more so, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday as he defended the first two years of Vista and claimed its successor will be a major release. — “[Windows 7], it's Windows Vista, a lot better …